Definition
A rescription, in French law, is a written instrument by which the maker directs a third party to pay a sum of money to a named person, or to account to that person for it on the maker's behalf. In essence, it is a letter of payment authorization — a predecessor concept to the modern bill of exchange. The functional relationship is triangular: the maker instructs a second party (the directed payer) to satisfy an obligation owed to a third party (the recipient).
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "The act of writing back; the answering of a letter."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A writing back; the answering of a letter."
Editorial note: In ordinary English, rescription means simply a written reply — a letter answered is a rescription. The legal meaning has nothing to do with correspondence or reply. In French commercial law, a rescription is a directive instrument ordering payment, placing it in an entirely different conceptual category from its common-language sense.
Common Confusion
Rescription and bill of exchange are closely related and historically overlapping concepts. Bouvier distinguishes them as follows: a bill of exchange arises from a contract of exchange between drawer and drawee (the Bouvier entry appears to have been cut off at this point, but the core distinction is that the bill of exchange presupposes a prior exchange contract between the parties, while a rescription may operate more broadly as a payment letter without that formal underpinning). In practice, researchers encountering "rescription" in translated French commercial materials should treat it as functionally equivalent to a bill of exchange unless context indicates otherwise. Do not confuse with rescript, which is a separate legal concept involving a sovereign's or court's written answer to a legal question.
Why It Matters in Research
Rescription is a term of French commercial law and will appear almost exclusively in materials dealing with continental European mercantile practice, French legal texts in translation, or comparative treatments of negotiable instruments. Researchers working in pre-modern commercial law, particularly materials touching on bills of exchange and the law merchant, may encounter it as a historical precursor concept.
The term has no independent life in Anglo-American common law. If it appears in an English-language source, it is almost certainly either (1) a translation of a French source, (2) a comparative law discussion, or (3) a historical treatment of the origins of negotiable instruments. Do not expect it to appear in common law case reporters or domestic statutes.
The Bouvier entry is more substantive than Black's and specifically draws the distinction between rescription and bill of exchange — a distinction that Black's (both editions) collapses by citing only the same Pothier reference without developing it. Researchers needing the sharper analytical line should go to Bouvier first, then trace to Pothier directly.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Bouvier — converge on the same core definition and cite the same authority: Pothier, Contrat de Change, no. 225. The near-identical language across Black's editions suggests this entry was carried forward without revision rather than independently researched.
Bouvier adds the most value by explicitly stating that "bills of exchange are a species of rescription" under Pothier's definition, then beginning a distinction that appears truncated in the available text. This is a meaningful analytical point: it positions the bill of exchange as a subset of the broader rescription category rather than treating the two as parallel or competing instruments. Researchers should not assume the concepts are interchangeable; Bouvier signals that the relationship is genus-to-species, with rescription as the broader category.
No dictionary entry in this set provides a definition of rescription in Roman law, canon law, or English common law contexts — its scope in the Law Mind corpus is confined to French commercial law.
Jurisdictional Note
Rescription as a legal term of art belongs to French law, not Anglo-American common law. It has no statutory recognition in U.S. or English law. Researchers working in Louisiana civil law materials should be alert to the possibility of encountering the concept, given Louisiana's French legal heritage and its historically distinct treatment of commercial obligations.